Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Beautiful People 37

I'm a little out of practice but I just had to comment on the ever changing standards of beauty in American culture.Have you noticed that low hairlines, beetling brows, thunder thighs and balloony buttocks have become the latest fashion in female beauty? It's like the cavewoman is back in style.Of course there is the alternate beauty ideal: the grizzled beef jerky look.Standards in male charisma and star quality have me somewhat baffled as well. They tell me that this sort of leading man is what we can all identify with.Or you can be part of an inbred family that only produces hairy brothers.Or...yikes!

24 comments:

There is a lot of fashion out there today that leaves a lot to be desired. However there does seem to be a throwback of sorts to fashion from the 60's & 50's, primarily in "hipster" circles. I do agree though, I think a lot of today's "stars" lack the charisma of those from decades before.

I have to say, 10 years ago I complained that male stars were only stars because they were handsome, they had no talent. Now the male stars have no talent AND they're pube-bearded, dumpy-looking sacks.

I sure hope no one's considering Roger Ebert part of the current standard of beauty.

It is ironic that his unfortunate ailments resulted in him looking like a living caricature of Arnold Stang. His jaw was a very prominent feature before. If you look at old pictures of him you realize just how inflated it used to look.

Maybe the tradeoff for having a super-sized jaw is that you may not be able to keep it for life. Jay Leno should be cautious...

The cliche explanation is multiculturalism: We're a multi-culti society now and so traditional African and Latino ideas of beauty are now prevalent.

Of course, this phenomenon is hardly new, and I wonder if it really is restricted only to African and Latino cultures. Back in the '40's and '50's Walt Disney and Freddie Moore got a lot of mileage out of the pear-shaped look. Ogle TinkerBell in the original "Peter Pan" movie, or a Freddie's girls drawing to see for yourself.

And what about Merle from "Comic Book" and Mabel from that George Liquor sketch. More examples of wide hips and bubble buttocks, and both very sexy examples.

Now why is it bizairre contradictions from your generation are "interesting oddities", yet oddities in our generation are signs of aesthetic decay. As endearing as George Liqour, his whole hook is based on him representing a generation who's bloodlust and nationalism was misconstrued as moral fibre. Granted, my kids will no doubt look on me as just as much a caveman, but as far as i'm concerned the good to crap ratio in popular culture hasn't change an ounce, it's just that all the crappy stuff from before tends to fade to obscurity while the crap of today is right up there for us all to endure.

and on a lighter note, ain't nothing wrong with a bit of cuishion pushin' :)